Failed Rwanda Truce Halts Evacuation : Central Africa: U.N. suspends plan to move 600 refugees. France deploys more troops to region.

The United Nations called off plans to move 600 refugees out of battered Kigali on Saturday after a newly struck truce between rebel and government forces collapsed within hours.

France sent more troops in on the third day of its U.N.-authorized mission to stop the bloodshed, raising its total to about 1,000 soldiers.

The French forces, based in border towns in Zaire, sent scouts by helicopter to western and southwestern Rwanda to check on the needs of hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the ethnic slaughter.

The French Defense Ministry said other European countries may send troops to the central African nation, and Italy said it will send a fact-finding mission to Rwanda to determine if its troops can help with relief efforts.

Heavy fighting in Kigali since Monday has made it impossible for the United Nations to safely get refugees out of the chaotic city.

About 300 people, mostly children, were to be evacuated from St. Michel Cathedral in Kigali to the eastern suburb of Kabuga, and an equal number were to be transferred from King Faisal Hospital in rebel territory to Runda, 12 miles west.

But heavy artillery fire broke a truce struck a few hours earlier Saturday, making the rescue impossible, said a U.N. military spokesman, Maj. Jean-Guy Plante.

A lull in the fighting did allow 70 people to be taken from the overcrowded Red Cross hospital, which is in the government-controlled area and has repeatedly come under fire, to King Faisal Hospital.

A mortar shell that hit the Red Cross hospital Friday killed at least seven patients, Red Cross officials said.

Nearly three months of war between Hutu-dominated government forces and Tutsi-led rebels has left hundreds of thousands of civilians dead, mostly in Hutu massacres of the Tutsi ethnic minority.

The rebels made a push for the capital this week, fearing anticipated French military intervention would rob them of victory.

France sent the first of 2,500 troops into Rwanda on Thursday, saying their mission is to prevent more killing, not to take sides in the civil war.

In Rome, Italy’s foreign and defense ministries issued a statement saying they would send a team to the Uganda-Rwanda border to “check out the possibilities of involvement of the armed forces” in such missions as guarding hospitals or escorting refugee convoys.